More Americans would be forced to pay taxes subsidizing broadband service in "unserved" locales, and cities would be free to go into the Wi-Fi business under an upcoming U.S. Senate bill. Later this week, Sen. Gordon Smith, an Oregon Republican, plans to introduce a legislative package called the Broadband for America Act of 2006, he said Tuesday morning at a conference hosted by the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, which represents small and rural carriers. Conspicuously absent from the bill, however, is any mention of Net neutrality, which refers to the idea of the federal government forcibly preventing broadband providers from favoring some Web sites or video streams’ connection speeds over others.

Symantec is planning to revamp the Phish Report Network, an online project aimed at cutting down on "phishing" identity theft attacks. On Tuesday, the security vendor said it will unveil a new design for the project’s Web site and will add a number of new industry partners, including AOL’s Netscape portal and Wells Fargo.

Iona Technologies has announced that Artix, the company’s Enterprise Service Bus, has successfully demonstrated reliable and transactional interoperability with Microsoft’s Windows Communication Foundation using Web services. WCF is the communications platform for Microsoft’s upcoming Vista operating system. Based on a Web services foundation, WCF extends Microsoft’s .Net Framework to enable developers to build secure, reliable and interoperable Web services and is part of WinFX, Microsoft’s managed code programming model included with Vista.

Another day, another Microsoft defector. At least that’s the public perception. Over the past couple of years, Microsoft brain drain has been a hot topic, with Microsoft developers and executives jumping ship for Amazon.com, Google, Technorati and a variety of other Web 2.0 players and startups. However, despite the dearth of headlines, Microsoft has been doing its own share of poaching, too. And many of Microsoft’s new big-name hires, such as Steve Berkowitz, the former Ask.com CEO who just joined Microsoft to head up the online business unit, are choosing to join Microsoft’s MSN and Windows Live teams.

Scribe Software, provider of data migration and integration software technology for Customer Relationship Management and Enterprise Resource Planning systems, announced its release of a solution to integrate Salesforce with Microsoft Dynamics GP (formerly known as Microsoft Great Plains). The solution is built on Scribe Insight, the integration platform certified by both Salesforce.com and Microsoft, and implemented at thousands of customers by hundreds of Scribe Certified Resellers. The integration solution is AppExchange Mobile-ready and immediately available on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange.

Barely two weeks after shipping an Internet Explorer security makeover to cover a wave of drive-by malware downloads, Microsoft is scrambling to address the public disclosure of a new zero-day vulnerability that could be used in code execution attacks. The Redmond, Wash. software maker confirmed it was investigating a warning posted on the Full-disclosure mailing list that the latest versions of IE causes various types of crashes when visiting Web pages with nested OBJECT tags. A spokesman for Microsoft said the initial investigation has revealed that the bug would most likely result in the browser closing unexpectedly or failing to respond.

Microsoft said it will fill out its management software line with a product to help IT pros troubleshoot problems and release a revamped Exchange management console next year. A product under development, code-named Service Desk, will be used as a foundation for a set of management-related tasks, such as keeping track of a company’s hardware and software or updating software configurations from a central point. Service Desk will be available at the end of 2007.

Newly disclosed, unpatched flaws in three browsers could make the Web a more dangerous place to surf, security experts have warned. Security researchers published details on the bugs in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Apple Computer’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox to security mailing lists over the weekend. The Firefox and Safari bugs could cause the browsers to crash, while the IE hole could be exploited to hijack a vulnerable Windows computer, Secunia said in advisories on its Web site.

Internet users around the world send an estimated 60 billion emails every day, and many of those are spam or scam attempts, business leaders said on Tuesday. Deutsche Telekom Chief Executive Kai-Uwe Ricke said cybercriminals were growing more active and sophisticated, and the vast email traffic meant industry, government and Internet users had to be vigilant and work together.

Microsoft opened its attack against European Union antitrust findings that it withheld information from rivals as a court hearing pitting the software giant against the EU entered a third day on Wednesday. Microsoft lawyer Ian Forrester told a 13-judge panel of the Court of First Instance, the second highest EU court, that Microsoft actions were entirely legal and he accused the EU’s executive Commission of interfering with market forces.